Ghairat, beghairtee and an Oscar award

The writer is an analyst and commentator.

The total runtime of the Oscar-winning documentary, ‘A Girl in the River: The Price of Forgiveness’ is forty minutes. In forty short minutes, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy depicts a Pakistani society that is, in equal parts, a cause for wondrous optimism and a source of deep trepidation. No one is naturally comfortable with such dissonance, and so it takes a degree of sensitivity to be able to appreciate both angles.

Where is the wondrous optimism in a film that narrates the attempted murder of a young woman by her own father and uncle for marrying of her own will? It is that there is a Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy to tell the story. It is that there was a lawyer named Asad Jamal to advise the victim. It is that there was a policeman named Akbar to arrest and imprison the perpetrators of murderous violence against a helpless and powerless victim. The wondrous optimism is that being an Oscar winning filmmaker allows you to knock on big doors. Doors that don’t open for just anybody. Doors that are being opened for the victims of acid-attacks and attempted honour killings. Doors that otherwise open only for the rich and the powerful. Not for nameless and faceless victims of sexual violence.

The wondrous optimism is that, in Mian Muhammad Nawaz Sharif, Pakistan has a prime minister who is willing to open those big doors, one willing to take risks, one willing to engage with activists like Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy. The wondrous optimism is that there are people around the prime minister that are helping guide him towards the issues that will help build a stronger, prouder and more capable society. Issues like healthcare insurance, like publicly-funded Montessori schools, like the importance of showing up at Diwali festivals and like working to eliminate honour killings.

These are conclusions we can draw about how ‘A Girl in the River’ inspires optimism without watching the film. All we needed to do to draw these conclusions was to follow the Oscars ceremony, and the prime minister’s initiative to screen the film at his residence, and speak powerfully about the need to end this shameful practice. The thing that inspires wondrous optimism most of all of course is the prime minister’s promise to bring about legislation that will close the legal loophole that allows murderous violence to be perpetrated without the stress of legal consequences.

Of course, ‘A Girl in the River’ is also a film that should inspire deep and unrelenting trepidation. For this, you must actually watch the documentary. The horror is inescapable. Chinoy’s second Oscar win is as much a story about a girl named Saba as it is about the canopy of misogyny within which Saba and the rest of us 200 million Pakistanis, live. Perhaps most of all, it is a story about the mindset that enables a father to try to kill his own daughter. And there is that word, embedded deep inside the film as much as it oozes over and envelopes it: honour.

Language is perhaps the most powerful form of discrimination. When we use the word honour in English, it feels exactly as it is meant to feel. However, if you are bilingual, or multilingual, and you have also used the Urdu word, ‘ghairat’, you know that as much as the two words are supposed to mean the same thing, they don’t actually mean the same thing. The test for embedded discrimination across the languages is simple. Is there a structurally symmetrical translation for the word ‘beghairat’ in English? It is an interesting challenge. I could not think of one. Certainly, dishonourable has neither the inherent vigour nor the rage that is possessed by ‘beghairat’. There is a tiny violence in just saying the word: ‘beghairat’.

This dichotomy is important because, with ‘A Girl in the River’, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy has triggered a public policy debate in which the likely, but certainly not assured, outcome is a law that targets the elimination of honour killings. For this alone, she deserves to be raised on our shoulders and celebrated as a uniquely gifted daughter of Pakistan. If the subject matter of her films makes us uncomfortable, we should be asking questions of acid attackers and fathers that try to kill their daughters, not the Academy Awards process that has now recognised the rare, globally-celebrated talent of Ms Obaid-Chinoy not once, but twice.

Watching ‘A Girl in the River’, however, I did not come away thinking about the passage of a law to close the forgiveness loophole that enables the beghairat murders of women (and men) known as honour killings. I came away thinking about the boldness of the murderous ‘ghairat’ that is the core engine of honour killings. Since I believe everyone should watch the film, I will not reveal the story or the ending. But the presence of a widely held view about the collective honour of families, tribes and communities being attached to the bodies of young women is no secret. We don’t need to watch this Oscar winning documentary to understand that honour killings do happen. And the perpetrators of murderous violence against victims are almost always allowed to get away with such murder.

The whataboutery on honour killings has already begun, even among otherwise sane and seemingly decent members of the English-language opinion set. One prominent columnist and anchor tweeted seemingly innocently about why a law to outlaw murder was needed when such laws already exist – conveniently ignoring the loopholes that prevent prosecution.

A parade of other devices of fallacious and spurious logic is not far behind. Why does Sharmeen not make films about the dark underbelly of American life? Why are we so concerned with the murder of women who run away with their lovers? Why aren’t we making laws to prevent incidents like Baldia Town, or enforced disappearances, or drone attacks? Why does the West reward Pakistanis for standing up and speaking out against the horrors at home?

What about this? What about that? What about everything except the thing that is obvious?

This shyness is not unique. No one likes ugliness. It is, by definition, the thing that we want to turn away from. We would like someone else to handle it. The messes we have inherited will not go away, simply because we find them too ugly to deal with.

Can bombing villages back to the Stone Age really solve the fundamental problems in Fata? We all know the answer to that. But we do have to clear it of the militants and terrorists. So let’s let the army take care of that, and the rest, well… we’ll see.

Can hanging Mumtaz Qadri and banning coverage of his funeral really solve the fundamental problem within mainstream conceptions of right and wrong amongst devout Muslims in Pakistan? We all know the answer to that as well. But we have to carry out Supreme Court orders, re-establish the writ of the state, and prevent more oxygen for the radicals for now. So let’s put Pemra to work, and the larger issues, well… we’ll see.

Can a new law that closes the loophole exploited for honour killings really solve the fundamental conception of honour and dishonour, and of ghairat and beghairtee in mainstream Pakistani society? We all know the answer to this too. But the Oscar for ‘A Girl in the River’ presents a unique opportunity to at least fix the legislative and legal issues. So let’s enact the necessary legislation. Now.

In a society that is ill-prepared to wrestle with serious questions and issues, the least we can do is often the most we can do. Whataboutery on the issue of the Women’s Protection Bill, or any similar legislation designed to protect women from violence must give way to the urgency of establishing new legislative and legal norms in which we prevent society from accepting cold-blooded murder under the guise of ghairat. The deeper conversation about the construction of ghairat and beghairtee is a longer one, and one that we should stop avoiding. But ‘A Girl in the River’ gives us the rare opportunity to take immediate and meaningful action. We must not fritter away this chance.